Here is The Writer's Challenge:
Write 1000 words a day - that's about 4 manuscript pages - every day, come hell or high water, until your novel is written. Then get an agent. Then get it published.
This is the year you write your novel!

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I'm updating weekly-ish and whenever something exciting happens, so please come back often, browse the archived information,and use the search feature to find information! Learn more about my books at ShoshannaEvers.com

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Walter Greatshell on Writing

Hello Fellow Writers!

I've been plugging away on my erotic romance "The Art Thief's Punishment" ever since I got a 'revise and resubmit' letter from Ellora's Cave. I think it's going quite well so far. I still haven't heard back yet from Harlequin about the partial they requested of "The Movie Star's Very Personal Assistant". I watch the mailbox daily with my fingers crossed that they will request a full.

I've been going to my second Advanced Writing Workshop at WCC and working on "Snowed in With a Millionaire" there. Very few changes have been made since the instructor, Vinny, has been liking the story as is. This week I plan on writing a synopsis so that when I hear back from Harlequin about "Movie Star" I'll be ready to send them "Snowed".

I recently read "Xombies: Apocalypse Blues" by Walter Greatshell. It was a great book and I read it so fast because I found I didn't want to put it down! It was horror mixed with science fiction, and there was no romance, so it wasn't the sort of thing I normally read. I read it because my father suggested it. I'm glad I did!

Walter Greatshell has an article he wrote about writing called "Playboy Loved Me: Confessions of a Freelance Failure" on his website, waltergreatshell.com. Read the whole article here, this is an excerpt:

I am a writer, though my lifetime of writing has not earned me as much as a year working at Dairy Queen. I always knew I was going to be a writer, and that I would have to go through a period of "paying my dues." I just didn't think it would take so long. Perhaps my naivete was fortunate, because if I had it to do all over again I think I would go with my childhood ambition: to be an ichthyologist. Study little fishies.
All writers are doomed by their initial piddling success - as any driving instructor will tell you, it’s hard to unlearn bad habits. In my case I won a contest, the Independent Press-Telegram Scary Story Contest, and although they never actually printed my story (a grudge I still nourish at my breast) I did get fifty dollars out of it. A boy's first pay! It was not unreasonable to expect that it would lead to greater things, that I was a teenage prodigy on the ladder to literary stardom. In fact, that money was the biggest sum I would make from any single manuscript until I was forty.
........
Hitchhiking once, I met a motivational speaker--a man who choreographed ninjas, flaming batons and bikinied go-go dancers for the purpose of galvanizing jaded salesmen--who banished my writing problems with one word: "Volume." His cure-all solution to freelancing was to send the same article to fifty publications at a time. Be active, not reactive! It seemed sensible, and I assured him I would do it.
"We'll see," he told me. "A lot of people secretly want to fail. They just can't do what it takes."
"I will. I'll do it," I said.
"Maybe. I'll be watching for your byline. We'll see."
I didn’t do it.

I'm looking forward to reading Greatshell's other novels, especially "Xombies: Apocalypticon", the sequel to the other Xombies book. Today I'm going to get cracking on that 2 page synopsis for "Snowed in With a Millionaire" at the Panera in Fishkill, NY with my writing buddies. It's not easy taking 181 plus pages of novel and boiling it down to 2 pages. Wish me luck, and good luck to you too!
Yours Truly,
Shoshanna Evers

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About Me

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Shoshanna Evers has written dozens of sexy stories, including The Man Who Holds the Whip (part of the bestselling MAKE ME anthology), Overheated, The Enslaved Trilogy, and The Pulse Trilogy (from Simon & Schuster Pocket Star).
Her work has been featured in Best Bondage Erotica 2012 and Best Bondage Erotica 2013, the Penguin/Berkley Heat anthology Agony/Ecstasy, and numerous erotic BDSM novellas including Chastity Belt and Punishing the Art Thief from Ellora’s Cave Publishing.
The non-fiction anthology Shoshanna Evers edited and contributed to, How To Write Hot Sex: Tips from Multi-Published Erotic Romance Authors, is a #1 Bestseller in the Authorship, Erotica Writing Reference, and Romance Writing categories.
Shoshanna is also the cofounder of SelfPubBookCovers.com, the largest selection of one-of-a-kind, premade book covers in the world.
Shoshanna is a New York native who now lives with her family and two big dogs in Northern Idaho. She welcomes emails from readers and writers, and loves to interact on Twitter and Facebook.
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